By @SimonCocking great interview with Ruben Guillen Izuma, Trials and Pilots Engineer, Nokia . Ruben will be speaking at the Quest for Quality event in Dublin, October 4th and 5th. The event, hosted by Comtrade Digital Services, will examine software testing in the platform economy world. Buy tickets here.

1 min pitch for what you are working on at the moment

Currently I am working as a test engineer in the Krakow Small Cells R&D Nokia centre as a Trials & Pilots engineer. Basically I work on testing our products during the latest phase of our testing processes – just before they get commercial – in which trialling and piloting our products with our customers is the main commitment. This means me and my teammates usually face real world scenarios and the related issues.

How was the last 12 months? What worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked?

The fact that my team’s testing activities are considered to be the closest to end-user scenarios makes work really interesting and challenging at the same time. It’s interesting because you get a sense of the final user experience through the various network configurations which are customer-specific and you also learn about all the different part of the products we sell. It’s challenging at the same time because it is impossible to mimic 100% the customer real environment in our lab or in the customer’s one. This leads us to some potential issues or misconfigurations that we have to face and solve in a short period of time.

I think processes and their paperwork are worth a mention if we talk about things that could move quicker. It’s a thing that is needed and you can’t avoid when handling projects, but it usually slows everything down.

Shortly I will be moving to a new internal position which is 5G related. The mobile communications sector never stops and that is why I think you need to be up for new challenges and learn as quickly as the market demands. 5G and IoT are one of the hot topics nowadays in the technology sector and I want to be involved from the early stages.

What will you be talking about at Quest for Quality?

My goal is to make the audience aware of what small cells are and what impact they can have on the coming years. We all know that data demands are going to increase massively, not only due to the regular end users, who will use more and more data caused in part by the growing platform economy, but also because all devices will be interconnected or connected to the internet – cars, wearables, home devices, factories, etc. In this scenario small cells will have a huge impact as they are easier to deploy than the regular macro antennas and they can be used to cover the gaps that the macro ones are leaving.

I will speak briefly about the processes we follow to improve our quality and make the best of our testing, such as: automating tests whenever no manual intervention is needed, adapting our environment to the customer’s real network configuration, or rehearsing the tests with the customers in order to avoid big surprises during the deployments of the new products.

If there is enough time I would like to make a small demo of LTE-U (LTE unlicensed) on one of our products. This will give the participants a chance to see how we test our products.

What inspired you to attend?

Nokia sent an email to all the employees with the top test conferences we could attend during this year and the following one. After reviewing them all, Quest for Quality was the one which caught my attention.

I saw the video from last year, the speakers who were already engaged, the venue… and I decided it was the right one to choose. I also liked that the conference doesn’t focus on one market only, or one specific kind of testing. It tries to get all the best testing practices from many different kind of businesses.

I subscribed to their newsletter – to learn more about it – and after that the Quest for Quality board contacted me and suggested that I be a speaker. I was delighted with that possibility, so I didn’t even doubt it.

I am looking forward to being there and share my experiences with all the attendees.

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

I normally use websites to be up to date with the latest technologies:

Engadget: I think this is one of the most popular technologies websites, so some of the readers will be familiar with it.

I try to keep LinkedIn up to date with all the projects I am working on.

Meanwhile, my Twitter use is more personal than professional. I think it is always good to keep the balance between the personal life and work. But I encourage your readers follow me or message me, I will be more than happy to discuss anything about technology or testing.